Sonorous, rather grandiloquent, it is a study in declamation, the
declamation of the slow movement in the F minor concerto.
Schumann may have had the first phrase in his mind when he wrote
his Aufschwung. This page of Chopin's, the torso of a larger
idea, is nobly rhetorical.
[Musical score excerpt]
What piano music is the nineteenth prelude in E flat! Its widely
dispersed harmonies, its murmuring grace and June-like beauty,
are they not Chopin, the Chopin we best love? He is ever the
necromancer, ever invoking phantoms, but with its whirring melody
and furtive caprice this particular shape is an alluring one. And
difficult it is to interpret with all its plangent lyric freedom.
No. 2O in C minor contains in its thirteen bars the sorrows of a
nation. It is without doubt a sketch for a funeral march, and of
it George Sand must have been thinking when she wrote that one
prelude of Chopin contained more music than all the trumpetings
of Meyerbeer.
Of exceeding loveliness is the B flat major prelude, No. 21. It
is superior in content and execution to most of the nocturnes.
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